


Last Night in Joigny

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst, Anticipation, Background Pairing: Dick Winters/Dairy Products, Banter, Canon Era, Episode: s01e10 Points, Established Relationship, Fine Dining, Food Porn, Goodbyes, M/M, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-09-26 01:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17132153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: The night before Nix ships back to the US, Dick takes him out for an evening on the town.





	Last Night in Joigny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jouissant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/gifts).



> Little bit of book canon, where Nix went home two months before Dick. Dick's description of this in his own book is: "Nixon departed Joigny the next week, making me about as lonesome as a lovesick sailor who married a Wave on an eight-hour pass."
> 
> I feel like I should apologise to the French, who are lovely on the whole. Dealing with foreign soldiers didn't bring out their friendly side.
> 
> Huge thank you to Zippitgood for beta reading on Christmas Day.

It was raining. It always seemed to be raining wherever the 506th went, except for when it snowed. Dick had the top up, but the rain worked its way into the jeep anyway, and his sleeve on the door side was soaking through. The tires spun dangerously in the mud, and Dick ground the clutch shifting down to get out of it. It'd be just his luck if he got stuck on the road between the army camp and the town of Joigny and end up pushing a jeep in his Class As.

Why Dick had bothered wearing his Class As, he had no idea. It wasn't like Nix cared what either of them looked like lately. He said he liked Dick best naked, but that hadn't happened much either since they'd left Austria a month before. It had hardly rained in Austria, only a few times Dick could remember. The rest had been a sun-soaked mirage, where everything was possible, even once they got home. They'd thought they were going home, then.

Dick pulled off the access road to the camp onto the pavement, and from there it was only a few minutes into Joigny proper. Dick'd had Zielinski work out the route for him, and Foley write out the instructions in French and send them in advance. Foley was going home the next day, too, his war having lasted nine months. He'd wear a single overseas bar on his sleeves to Dick's five and counting.

The restaurant was a black-market place that a couple of the guys had found. Dick didn't ask where the chefs got the supplies for full-course meals in still-rationed France. Whosoever's problem that was, it sure wasn't Dick's, not even if the crates had _Property of the U.S. Army_ stamped on them. Dick pulled the jeep half onto the curb like the locals did and walked in.

Nix was there already, leaning back in his chair, a glass of something amber and light-catching in one hand, a half smoked cigarette in the ashtray. The sliced loaf in the middle of the table sat untouched. Nix hadn't bothered with a dress uniform, and the tie of his service uniform was loosened and askew. Dick felt the heat rise in his face at how over dressed he was, but he couldn't back down now.

"You're looking smart," Nix commented. He tipped back the last of his drink and stubbed out the cigarette, his gestures carrying the deliberate care of a man a few drinks in who was trying not to show it. That just figured.

"Meeting with Division," Dick lied as he sat across from Nix, then felt like a heel for doing it, but he couldn't very well admit that he'd wanted to look nice for Nix, not now. "You're early."

Nix shrugged and raised his glass in salute. The waiter appeared and poured Nix a flute of champagne, and—with a deeply pained expression—a glass of water for Dick.

"Can I get a coffee?" Dick asked. " _Un café, s'il vous plaît?_ " That was about the beginning and end of his French.

"Certainly, Monsieur," the waiter said and vanished.

Something about that made Nix snort, but instead of commenting he asked, "How'd you get him to give you water?"

"Got Foley to say it was for religious reasons."

"Ha," Nix said. "Surprised they went for it."

Dick shrugged, and the conversation stalled out. It should just be another meal between buddies, but Dick had made it too formal and had stifled it. He sipped his water and wondered how in the world he was going to make it through a three-hour meal if they couldn't talk to each other. How had they gotten to the point where they couldn't talk to each other about anything at any time, like they'd been able to from day one?

Dick looked around. Of the dozen tables and handful of booths, almost all seated at least one man in an American uniform, the better half of them Screaming Eagles, with the rest general infantry, French officers and even the odd civilian to spice the mix. The women made up a combination of nurses, WACs, and local girls. Only a few other tables had pairs of men, and one corner had a group of Air Corps brass that Dick didn't recognise, all talking with a quiet intensity. The crisp uniforms and well groomed young men didn't look quite right against the oddments of furniture, and only barely matching china and cutlery of a restaurant that had scraped itself together out of the ruins of several old ones. Dick thought their table had once been part of an outdoor cafe. It rocked slightly when Nix leaned on it.

Not that the French would ever admit that this shabby make-do was anything less than the finest dining outside of Paris, if they even admitted that Paris existed. In the daylight, the windows would overlook the River Yonne, but the French ate so late that it was dark already, even without the rain.

"What did you order?" Nix asked, at least trying, bless him. He fit in better here than anyone else did, with his hair ruffled and his uniform never quite correct these days. He wouldn't be wearing it much longer anyway.

"No idea," Dick answered. "I think they have a set menu, and I couldn't work out what it was."

The waiter reappeared with two plates the size of Dick's palm, each bearing a tiny tart filled with something pink and indecipherable. The rapid-fire French explanation illuminated nothing.

Dick looked at Nix and raised his eyebrows, but Nix only shrugged again, "And we still don't know what it is," Nix said.

"I thought you spoke French."

"He didn't tell me how many platoons of volksgrenadiers he'd seen, or that the bridge had been blown up and we'd have to find another route, so he lost me." Nix poked at the tart, the tiny fork gleaming in his hand, looking like it belonged in a doll house. "It might be a duck?"

It didn't look like it could be a duck, but Dick picked up the same fork as Nix was using, and pried off a small bite. The thing was damned awkward to use, but when he got it in his mouth the buttery flakes of pastry melted against his tongue, preparing him for the rich filling. Dick still didn't think it was a duck, but whatever it was had a deep smokey taste and the acid tang of red wine. "This isn't bad," he admitted. "It'd be easier if I could just pick it up."

Nix laughed. "If you want to shock the waiter, we could have sex on the table."

"I'm sure he's used to Americans. We're paying for all this." It took Dick almost a minute to work another piece of the tart off onto the fork, and he wondered if that was the point: to make the meal drag on. The point of most things the French invented seemed to be to annoy Dick as much as possible. How Nix put up with them he didn't know, but then Nix was drunk most of the time now anyway.

"Maybe not that used to them," Nix answered, and then flashed a grin. "I'd like to though. Farewell fuck." His voice was low, almost growling, half lost under the chatter and clatter of the dining room, but Dick still glanced around to make sure no one was looking at them. "What?" Nix asked. "Not like I have to live with them anymore anyway."

"I do," Dick shot back before he could catch himself. Nix was only joking. Dick shouldn't snap. He was snapping far too much these days. He stabbed his fork through the tart and shovelled the whole thing in his mouth. Nix grimaced and knocked back his champagne. "So," Dick said, "What's the first thing you're going to do when you get home?"

Without a drink, Nix picked at his tart, flaking bits of crust off with the edge of his fork and crushing them against the plate. "Don't know where I'm landing yet," he said. "Guess if it's Newark, I'll catch a train into the city and see if the Astor's still rationing."

Rationing was almost ended, Dick realised. His sister had said something about it being just butter and sugar now. The war was over for everyone except the lucky few stuck on occupation duty until the End Times. Dick wanted to go home so badly he could weep, but at the same time he had no idea what he would do when he got there. "Won't your family meet you?" he asked, then corrected to, "Your parents, I mean, or Blanche?" Not Kathy or Nix's son, who had gone back to Arizona.

"I don't think so." Nix decisively mushed the tart into his plate, and then scooped the rubble into his mouth. Dick watched his expression, trying to sort the bitterness from the regret, but he couldn't tell who Nix was angry at: his parents, himself, or even Dick.

"No?" Dick asked, feeling for a thread to pull.

"No." Nix glanced down at his crumb-strewn plate and sighed. "Sounds like Mom decided to follow Kathy's lead and divorce Dad. At long last, the hour has come. Surprised she didn't do it years ago. So she and Blanche are out in Frisco conspiring, and I figure Dad's down in Florida for the winter, burying his sorrows in blondes half his age."

It wasn't even fall yet. Dick wanted to ask who was managing the nitration plant, but supposed there must be some kind of foreman. "You don't want to join him?" Dick asked, meaning in Florida, but the double meaning of it occurred to him too late.

"Yeah, no. I prefer redheads."

"The kind you meet at the Astor?" Dick snapped still without thinking. He'd heard too much about the beautiful young men there, all curled hair and bright ties and handkerchiefs, their wrists swishing as they lifted their pink gins. Most men like Dick knew it as a place to find a certain type of queer.

"For Christ's sake, Dick," Nix muttered, but the waiter appeared, and saved them both from whatever he might have said next. Dick noticed that the man had a limp, and wondered if he'd served.

He took the empty plates and returned a moment later with shallow bowls of clear broth. Nix got a glass of white wine. Dick got a pointed look and a sigh as the waiter refilled his water glass.

Dick realised that he'd forgotten to ask if his coffee would be arriving soon, but didn't want to flag the waiter down. He didn't want to talk to Nix either, so he took a careful sip of his broth. It tasted sharply of celeriac with the warm depth of chicken under it. Dick's mother had made soup like this, though heartier and with the chicken and vegetables still in it. Dick couldn't imagine not wanting to see his parents right away after being overseas for over two years.

"Look, Dick," Nix said. He'd softened his tone, and his boot bumped into Dick's under the table, "I know you miss your folks, but it's not the same in the House of Nixon. Hell, you should be going home, not me. I don't know why I'm getting points for a kid I'm never going to see. You've got what, a hundred now?"

"A hundred and eight," Dick said. He'd gotten some more for that bronze star, but aside from another ribbon on his chest, it didn't seem to be doing him any good. "I don't want to trade." Not if it meant leaving Nix in France and facing the States without him.

"Don't know what you want, do you? Indecisive S.O.B.," Nix answered, then looked away, finally taking a spoonful of his soup.

That would have stung less if it hadn't been so true. "Tell General Taylor that," Dick said, "maybe he'll change his mind about declaring me essential."

"I'll give it a go when I get back stateside ." Nix dropped his spoon, and it clattered into the bowl and sent a splash of soup across the cloth. "I don't know what I'm going to do when I get back," he said. His tone had turned despairing.

Dick wanted to reach across the table and pull Nix into his arms and promise him that Dick would be there no matter what. Too bad he didn't know if either the embrace or the promise would be welcome, even if they were in private. Nix had offered him a job back in Austria, but hadn't talked about it since Zell am See. Dick had no idea if it had been an offer made in the dreamy good will of the Austrian sun, or if Nix had meant it then but regretted it now. Dick knew that if he pressed the point, Nix would feel obliged to stick with it, whether he wanted to or not—whether he wanted Dick or not. Dick took another sip of the soup and thought of just forgetting about New Jersey and going home to Lancaster. He could probably get a job with Edison Electric again, or maybe look into something on a farm. He could live with his parents until he found his own place, and his mother would cook for him. Dick never spent his pay, and wouldn't have to work for a few months at least. He could go home and just sleep, and not worry about what anyone expected of him, Nix most of all.

"You're three thousand miles away already," Nix said, and Dick realised that he'd drifted instead of answering Nix's outburst. He looked at the dark stains on the table cloth then at Nix's face. They both were so damn tired.

"Sorry, Lew," Dick said, though he didn't know what he was apologising for, or what apology, if any, Nix most wanted to hear.

Nix took a long swallow of his wine before reaching across the table and brushing his knuckles against Dick's. "Hey, it's all right," he said. Nix looked like he wanted to say more, but he closed his mouth and straightened in his chair.

"Yeah, it's just peachy." Dick frowned when Nix flinched at the bite in his voice. He wouldn't apologise again, but he hadn't wanted to fight either. This was their last night together for months, maybe forever, and Dick was ruining it by being the sharp-tongued, hard-nosed, S.O.B. that made all the replacement officers and troopers quake when they saw Major R.D. Winters coming. Dick tried to soften around the old hands—mostly just Nix and Harry left now, and tomorrow just Harry—but he knew they too were treading carefully around him.

Instead of answering, Nix focused on his soup. The way he slurped his spoon made Dick's mouth twitch down before he realised what he was doing. Nix had always slurped his damn soup; he'd slurped it at OCS, and he'd slurped it out of a battered tin cup while huddling in Dick's CP outside of Bastogne. Nix had kept trying to give Dick part of his share that night, and Dick had always refused, but promised himself that he'd never sit and watch Nix look hungry again, at least not on Christmas Day. "Guess you'll have a better Christmas dinner this year, huh?" Dick said.

"Worse'd be a trick," Nix agreed. "Though those mashed parsnips in Aldbourne were in the running."

Dick made a face, remembering. He'd thought they were potatoes and taken a huge serving, then had to choke the lot down because throwing away food was just short of a hanging offence. Nix had laughed at him the entire time, before finally eating the last few spoonfuls out of pity. Now, Dick tore the end off the sliced baguette lying across the table and savoured the crunch of the crust and the freshness of the soft white centre. It was still warm. "You know," Dick said, considering all the dubious food they'd choked down over their three years in the army, "I think this might be the first time we've had a decent meal together."

"That can't be right," Nix said, but Dick watched the memory of army rations and rationed restaurants, PXs and Red Cross canteens flow across Nix’s face. "Is that right?"

"Just the two of us, anyway." Christmas dinner at Fort Bragg hadn't been bad. Sink had sprung for turkeys, but they'd been packed in cheek by jowl, and Nix had been sitting with battalion staff, not with the company officers.

"What about that picnic up in the meadow above Kaprun," Nix asked. He leaned across the table and dropped his voice. "You know, the one where we..."

Dick held up a hand to shut him up. "That was decent."

"Oh, a glowing recommendation."

"But I don't remember what we ate." On Nix's look, Dick felt his cheeks heat and added hastily, "of the food."

"Well, as long as you didn't forget the good parts," Nix said. He was still leaning in, and his fingers played suggestively up the length of the bread in a way that definitely reminded Dick of that meadow above Kaprun. They'd had two and a half months of peace and beauty together. What in the US could compare to that?

"I'll never forget that day," Dick said, but before he could say more, perhaps too much, the waiter returned to take the empty soup bowls.

He returned with a pastry fish on each plate, that when Dick looked at it was a real fish, but baked inside a crust of scales with the mouth and eye artfully indicated with a few slices of pastry. When he copied Nix in picking up the knife with the little upturned end and sliced in, the covering was a half dozen airy flakes deep, and the trout was tender and pink underneath.

"Are you supposed to eat the head?" Dick asked. The fish's real eye stared dully out from under the pastry simulation.

"Probably?" Nix guessed, but Dick didn't see him tucking in so started at the tail. "What about you?" Nix asked. "What's the first thing you'll do if Uncle Sam ever springs you?"

Dick hesitated. He took a bite and closed his eyes as the airy flakiness of the dough melted against the tender flesh of the trout. It was barely cooked and almost unseasoned, but it didn't need to be. He'd used to go fishing with his uncles and burn his fingers eating the trout over the fire. He'd wanted to share that with Nix, to take him up in the hills and breathe free fresh air and peace. He'd wanted to show Nix everything he loved about Pennsylvania. Dick wondered how Nix could even ask Dick what he wanted to do. The answer should be understood as _find you_. That's what they'd done every time they'd been apart since they'd met three and a half years before.

"You're going straight home to your folks, aren't you?" Nix demanded. "Cheery Christmas around the fire, midnight mass and singing hymns all the way home through the snow."

"I hope I get back before Christmas," was all Dick could say. The image choked him up, the pull of home and parents he hadn't seen in more than two years warring with the ache of Christmas without Nix.

"You will." Nix finished the third glass of wine in one long swallow, and leaned forward, his breath sweet. "If I have to come back over here and get you."

"What, Christmas in Paris?" Dick asked.

"Sure, like I promised you last year." Nix frowned, his inebriation exaggerating his emotions. "Guess that didn't work out so well, huh? Intelligence failure."

"Not on you," Dick said. Nix was the only intelligence man he wasn't furious at about missing that.

"You shouldn't have been there," Nix insisted.

"I'd rather have been in a foxhole with you than in Paris by myself." After he said it, Dick wondered if that was the closest he'd ever come to telling Nix how he felt about him.

"Yeah, I love you too," Nix said, but the sarcasm undercut the words. He'd been so damn volatile lately, his emotions changing between breaths. Dick missed the steady, solid Nix of the year before.

Was this what it would be like back in the States? Nix always drinking, Dick never knowing what either of them felt, every overture tossed back like a grenade? Dick picked at the fish, working the flesh free of the bones and wondering what he'd been thinking. Of course Nix would never want to go camping. Dick had never asked Nix about all the things he'd dreamed they'd do, and maybe there was a good reason he hadn't. Dick could tolerate a lot of things, but not being mocked.

Nix seemed abashed, either by the outburst or by the truth behind it, and focused on separating the pastry and the fish into to discrete piles, each one as mangled as the other. Dick ate as quickly and methodically as he could, not wanting to drag this meal out for a second longer than he had to.

"Stupid," Dick muttered aloud, and Nix let it pass without comment.

His fish disassembled, Nix rolled his water glass between his hands, smearing them with condensation. He watched Dick eat, and said nothing.

They should just end this. Dick should make a clean break and start the life he'd begun planning before the war. This hadn't been real—his romance with Lewis Nixon—not truly. It had only existed in the winter world of the war, and now that the war was over, the possibilities melted like snow. One of them was just going to have to admit defeat at some point. Dick would have weeks ago, except he liked fighting pointlessly better than retreating.

Dick worked from the tail of the fish to the head, leaving a little trail of bones—ribs scattered and the spine intact—until the head was uncovered. He used the point of the knife to extract the cheek of the fish, but left the rest of the head alone. It looked like a cartoon of bones left by a cat: the perfect shape of something eaten up.

When he looked up, Nix was still toying with his glass, looking like he was on the verge of summoning the waiter to get more wine. Really, the man should have come over already. Nix hadn't finished his plate and wasn't going to. That, more than anything, was a sign of peacetime. Half the world was starving or on rations, and Nix was leaving food on his plate. Dick reached across the table with his silly little three-pronged fork and scooped some up.

"What if I was eating that?" Nix asked, not even bothering to claim that he had been.

"Well, you could fight me for it."

"Nope. Seen what happens to people who fight you." Nix slumped back away from the table, pushing his chair back. "No fight left in me, Dick."

Dick took another forkful of Nix's fish, spearing some of the pastry on the way by, though it was sodden from having been picked apart and left in a heap. He put his fork down. "I don't want to fight you, Lewis."

"No, guess you don't." Nix agreed, but wouldn't look up.

The waiter took their plates, and made a humming noise at Nix's but said nothing. He was gone for a moment, and Dick considered just running out. Like a coward.

"Oh thank God," Nix muttered when the waiter came back with a deep glass of red wine.

Dick almost said that he didn't think Nix needed any more to drink, but he wasn't that much of a bastard. If he weren't a teetotaller, Dick would be drinking too. He could certainly see the appeal of blurring some of the edges off this night.

At least the food was good. The new course was a thick tenderloin in shimmering burgundy sauce. The smell of herbs and seared meat rose up and filled Dick's head. His mouth watered even though he'd already eaten more than he had in most meals. He wanted to dig in and devour it like a wolf, but when he looked up, Nix was still leaning away from the table with his wine glass half empty, staring into the middle distance behind Dick's shoulder and not even glancing at his plate. Dick's gut tightened.

He wished he knew what to say. He'd tried, "I'm sorry," and he'd come so close to telling Nix he loved him, only to have the words flung back at him in a sarcastic tone.

"Look," Nix said. He leaned forward, and the front chair legs hit the floor with a thud. "I'm actually a cheap date. You don't have to wine me and dine me to soften me up. You got to have better uses for whatever you spent on all this."

"That's not what I'm doing," Dick snapped, so that he didn't say he'd spend every penny he had if he thought it'd make Nix happy, if money ever could make a man happy. It sure hadn't done a lot for the Nixons.

"No?" Nix asked. "'Cause I've seen the break up speech a dozen times, and it usually comes with enough booze that I'm supposed to be too soused to notice that I've been ditched."

"I'm not—" Dick realised his voice was too loud. He lowered it and leaned in. No one was looking at them anyway, but they still had to be so careful. Dick would have to spend the rest of his life being careful if he stayed with Nix. He wished he could keep the anger out of his voice. "I don't want to ditch you, Lew."

"Sure you don't," Nix answered. He wasn't bothering to speak quietly at all, but his words had gained a precision they'd been missing before. "That's why you haven't said a damn word to me all week, and now you've blown half a month's pay on dinner. Right before I ship out, so you won't have to look at me after."

"I haven't been talking to you because it's too damn miserable watching you drink," Dick snapped back. "And you've been avoiding me."

"You used to look for me when I avoided you," Nix answered. "And you didn't used to care about my drinking."

"I care now." Dick's stomach boiled and twisted in anger and with something deeper. Maybe it was shame. He was sick with it, and didn't want to touch the food in front of him. He didn't want to look at Nix either, but he made himself do it. Dick looked Nix right in the eye and said again, in a softer tone, "I care, Nix."

"Then how come—" Nix started but he couldn't even ask Dick straight out. At least this time he didn't look away. "You can just tell me, Dick," he said again. "Tell me and get it over with."

"I don't have anything to tell you except that I care." Dick moved his foot until he found Nix's and then rubbed Nix's calf with the toe of his boot. "I was trying to be romantic, for Pete's sake." Hell, maybe he had meant to soften Nix up, just a little bit, to try and pry some declaration of sentiment out of him and make sure that Dick had a shot if he ever got back to the States.

"Oh," Nix said, stopped cold. "Oh. Romantic." Then he started to laugh. Nix rocked back in his chair and laughed until tears leaked out of his squeezed up eyes. His face, flushed red from drink, turned almost purple.

Now people were looking at them, and Dick leaned back as well, smiling tentatively. He didn't know why Nix was laughing, or if he was laughing at Dick or his offer, but at least Nix seemed to be feeling something other than drunken sullenness or bright cynicism.

"You okay?" Dick asked when Nix ran out of breath and paused to wipe his eyes.

"Jesus," Nix said, recovering enough to sit up straight and take a sip of his wine. He almost choked on it as he started to laugh again. His boot bumped into Dick's, and Dick watched him pull himself together. "I don't know what's wrong with me," Nix said finally. "It's not even funny."

"What isn't?"

"How bad we are at this." Nix sliced the edge off his steak, suddenly interested in food, while Dick's stomach still ached from the uncertainty. "All week, I've been expecting you to cut me out, thinking, 'how am I going to do this without him?' I couldn't figure it out."

"Huh," Dick said, almost laughing, but Nix was right, it wasn't really that funny. "You know, I couldn't either. I kept thinking that"—he shook his head, and looked down at his plate—"uh, that there had to be a way to tell you that. So I did this."

"Instead of telling me?" Nix asked. His eyes were sparkling with tears. Dick would never fall out of love with the way a true smile transformed his face.

"Yeah," Dick agreed. "Instead of telling you." Instead of risking being laughed at and mocked, the way Nix seemed to mock just about everything these days. "Listen," he said, with sudden urgency. He reached across the table and took Nix's hand, not caring who was watching. "Lew, come up to Lancaster for Christmas."

"Your parents..." Nix let the protest trail off. His hand turned under Dick's so that they rested palm to palm. Nix's hands had softened in the months since the war in Europe had ended. They'd doubtless be softer still by the next time Dick saw him. Dick wondered if his own would still be rough.

"My parents will be happy to have the man who kept their son alive," Dick said. If they weren't, then they'd be too polite to say it. Dick didn't care. They could like Nix or not, it was up to them. "Mom makes a heck of a spread for Christmas."

"I'd like to try it," Nix told him. He was still smiling, but more softly now. The colour in his cheeks had faded to a rosy glow, and if his eyes weren't completely focused, that was okay too. Alcohol and good will filled his expression, and Dick felt himself softening in response.

For what felt like the first time since they'd come to Joigny, Dick felt his shoulders drop and his breath come more easily. There was a muscle in the corner of Dick's jaw that ached from how hard he'd been clenching it, and he only noticed it now that he stopped. They'd been holding hands for far too long, so Dick pulled, back, but his fingers trailed across Nix's palm as though he were trying to read the lines there, and Nix curled his fingers in to hook against Dick's for a moment.

"I'd invite you back to New Jersey for New Year's Day, but it'd be just the two of us."

"I don't think I'd mind that," Dick said.

"Yeah?" Nix asked, and they both smiled at each other, all other offers and promises passed in the silent lift of Nix's eyebrow and the tilt of Dick's head.

Dick turned back to the meal just to busy his hands and found he was hungry all over again. The meat melted under his knife, falling off rather than slicing away. It had been seared on the outside, but the centre held the rich colour of garnets. Dick tasted iron and fat, and cut with the sweetness of the sauce. Dick moaned slightly and sucked the last of the sauce of the tines of the fork as he slid it out of his mouth. When he opened his eyes, Nix was watching him with wide eyes and parted lips. Nix licked his lips as Dick watched, and there was a promise in that too. Now Dick wanted to skip out on dinner in order to get to dessert faster. Only he wasn't going to give up food like this.

"I'm pretty sure this cow was U.S. Army property," Nix commented.

Dick shook his head. "We never see meat like this in the Five-Oh-Sink."

"It goes to division staff," Nix said between bites. "If I'd ever made G2, I'd have smuggled you some."

"Figures," Dick muttered. "Too bad someone cut it out of the supply line."

"Real shame," Nix agreed. He looked at his nearly empty plate like he was considering licking it.

Dick's mother would have strapped him for even thinking about it, but suddenly Dick wanted to. He wanted to shock the waiter, hell the whole damn restaurant. Dick could lick the gravy off the plate then smash it down and take Nix's hand again and make love to him right there, like Nix had suggested earlier. Instead he took a slice of the bread and used it to mop up the sauce.

Their plates were empty already, and they waited for the waiter to come back, not able to look away from each other's faces now that the dam had burst between them. If Nix had been a lady, Dick would have taken his hand, maybe even kissed it. There was a GI in a booth across the room with his girl almost in his lap, and no one was looking twice at him. Dick could see the offer of that in Nix's eyes, too, but couldn't do anything more about it than play a slow game of footsies.

When the waiter came for their plates and broke the moment, Dick nearly sighed in relief.

He looked down and found salad, and shook his head in perplexity. Why salad? Why now? "Hey, how about that coffee?" Dick asked the waiter's back.

"You're not going to get it," Nix told him.

"But he said..."

Nix just shook his head.

Dick sighed and considered all the things he didn't like about the French. It wasn't a short list. Although, he had to admit that their food wasn't bad, contraband beef or not. The salad dressing was sweet and mustardy, and the lettuce crunched pleasantly. Dick felt the vinegar roll over his tongue and up into his sinuses as much as he tasted it. His mouth watering, Dick took another bite. He didn't even like salad.

"I don't fly out until eleven hundred tomorrow," Nix said.

"That so?" Dick asked around a bite. Nix had a new glass of jewel-bright wine, but hadn't touched it yet.

"Yeah, it is. I was thinking of making a late night of it. Live it up a little, you know?"

Dick made a humming noise around his fork. "Sounds like trouble."

"Trouble? Me?" Nix asked, but his heart didn't seem to be into the banter, and he let it drop. His tone was far too serious when he asked, "Want to, uh, come along and make sure? I know you're usually in bed by nineteen hundred, but..."

"I could make an exception," Dick granted. "Wouldn't want the MPs catching up with you on your last night."

"I'm sure my virtue is safe with you." Nix frowned. "Or is that backwards? Is it my honour?"

Dick chuckled. "I don't think either one works, Lew."

Lew sipped his wine, then held the glass up to the light, considering it. "Too bad I might be too drunk to make it back to camp."

"Too bad I know you well enough to have booked a hotel room," Dick said.

Nix choked mid sip, and had to cough into his napkin like a consumptive until he could say, "So I was right. You are buttering me up. I really am a cheaper date than this."

"Yeah, maybe I am," Dick said, "but maybe you're worth it."

Suddenly shy, Nix focused on clearing his plate. It was more greens than Dick had seen him eat cumulatively in two years, but it was almost more than the army had served them anyway. Dick liked watching Nix eat, wanted to make sure he got enough—more than enough—for the rest of his life, wanted to put the fullness back in Nix's cheeks and that roll of puppy fat back on Nix's hips, like he'd had when they first knew each other.

When the waiter approached, Nix said, " _Pas de fromage. Crème glacée, s'il vous plaît._."

The waiter stopped so abruptly his shoes squeaked, but something in Nix's eyes made him nod and take their plates away with no more protest than an audible sniff. He was gone for long enough that Dick had another piece of bread. It was probably army flour too, but nothing the mess did with it ever tasted this good.

The waiter returned with two small bowls of vanilla ice cream a moment later.

"Think you can get me coffee?" Dick asked, and Nix laughed.

"Nope."

"Oh well." Dick dug into the ice cream. Savouring the rich texture and simple flavours. He didn't think he'd had any since Mourmelon, in the spring. The Austrians had been big on sorbet, and it just wasn't the same. "When I get home, if rationing is over, I'm going to eat ice cream every day."

"You'll get fat," Nix said, but he didn't sound like he minded. It felt like luxury to both of them.

"Maybe I'll find some way to work it off."

"I'm sure I can think of something." Nix's tongue traced the edge of his spoon, catching a white drop of ice cream before it could fall to the tablecloth. He put the spoon in his mouth, and his cheeks hollowed as he sucked at it.

Dick swallowed hard and looked away. It had been too long since he'd felt Nix's mouth on him. Dick had wasted so much time being angry at everything this past month, and Nix had pulled into himself, falling into a bottle with no one to help pull him out. That would change when they got home, Dick promised himself. They'd help each other. "Speaking of work," Dick said, then held up a hand when Nix groaned dramatically. "I was wondering if that job offer was still open."

"Of course it is," Nix said. "You didn't think..." He broke off, then shook his head. "Yeah, of course it is. It would have been even if you and I weren't still—" What he and Dick were doing was indicated with a circular gesture of Nix's dessert spoon.

"Right, of course," Dick said, quickly. He felt like a heel for asking, and more so because he hadn't believed that Nix had really meant his offer, and because a corner of Dick's heart still doubted it. But now Nix had promised him Christmas, and Dick had promised Nix New Year's Day as well, assuming Dick was home in time for either. If not, Nix had said he'd meet Dick in Paris. Maybe it was that kind of promise that made Dick doubt the everyday ones. He shouldn't. Nix had promised to jump out of an airplane with him, and had done it, and had marched through the mud, blood and horror right next to Dick for two years. "Of course," Dick said again.

"Ice cream every day," Nix said. "Rain or shine, if I have to make it myself."

"You have any idea how to make ice cream?"

"None whatsoever, but I'm a quick study."

Dick had some doubts as to whether or not that applied in the kitchen, but he was feeling too ebullient to care about details. He soaked in the coolness of the ice cream, striking in contrast to his heating cheeks. Soon they'd be done, and walking down the rainy streets to a private room. Nix might go the next day, but it would only be a month or so before even the Army realised it wasn't fair to hold onto Dick any longer. After that, their whole lives lay ahead of them. Maybe they'd try talking about that some time, too.

"Come on," Dick said, and started to rise. He'd paid the bill in advance; they could go right now.

But Nix held up his hand, a single finger raised, and as he did, the waiter appeared again. He deftly gathered their plates with one hand, and with the other set a silver coffee service in the centre of the table.

Dick and Nix looked at each other, and, as one, started to laugh.


End file.
